B2 Chapter 259: Trusting Strangers

    Watching the jailor swagger his way into their prison, Kenva forced herself to stay still and steady. Even if she was nervous about how this would go, and still struggled to fully believe that Kaius had a way to slip out of the cells and deal with their captor, she was absolutely sick of cowering.

    Her rise, burning bright across the Frontier as she forged her own path according to the traditions of her people, had only made the fall all the more crushing. Before Kaius and his team had arrived, she had been on the verge of giving up. The weight of it had grown too much, an all consuming fatigue that had weighed heavier every second of every day.

    No matter how much she had searched, tried to find a solution, there had been nothing.

    And then they arrived.

    Even if this ended with her death, it would be better than that slow consumption she’d been subjected to for months. Endlessly waiting for a mindcracker to arrive and shatter her psyche, cowering in fear of the punishment formation on her cell, shrieking in agony as her flesh was split and cut.

    All of it—the men of this place needed to burn.

    Seeing her small act of defiance, the jailor''s face twisted into a snarl. Spittle flew, landing on the roughly hewn stone floor.

    By the grace of the Bloodstones, she suppressed the mad smile that threatened to spill across her face. She didn’t want it to be her fault if enraging the jailor threw off Kaius and his team’s plan.

    As the fattened and cruel man walked on, her focus shifted to where Kaius was standing quietly in the back of his cell—intense focus and calm determination visible in the thin line of his mouth, and the heavy furrow in his brow.

    Despite sharing many secrets, she only had a nebulous understanding of what their plan was. She knew he had a strange magic he thought was unaffected by the formations in their cells, that he had memorised a good chunk of the compound, and that he believed they had the strength to break free.

    Outside of that...it was still a struggle to see how it all came together. Not that it mattered—if this was all just a prelude to dying a glorious death, that was preferable to the other fates available to her.

    Kenva still wanted to know how he planned to escape from his cell.

    Her companions of circumstance were still hiding things from her. It was something she was fine with—understood completely, after her quick and brutal introduction to the realities of northern secrecy.

    Everything she learned of them made her all the more curious. Even on the basis of the Honours they had earned alone, having so many of them beggared belief. Even earning the three she had had been a fraught and deadly experience.

    For these delvers to have earned multiples of that number? It suggested experiences that boggled the mind—and an unrepentant hunger to throw themselves against impossible odds.

    She liked that.

    Despite that, it was strange to meet people that were just as—if not more—accomplished than her. After her trials, seizing Honours and going so far as to discover an aspect while imprisoned, she thought that it would be almost impossible to find someone who had dived head first into the opportunities of the phase change with as much abandon.

    She’d thought she was unique.

    And yet, the proof stood in front of her. A consummate delver, her own age—a whole team of them. One of them was even a greater beast! Though of a kind that she hadn’t heard of before. Everything they had said painted them as consummate fighters, and they did know about honours, so they couldn’t be weaklings.

    Especially not with what Farseer said about him.

    ??? - ??? - ???

    ???, Lethal Threat, ???

    The Mask he had was inordinately strong—impossibly so, even if he did have enough Honours that his stats should be absurdly inflated. Yet, there was one thing it couldn’t block. R??ΑNo?????

    Farseer did many things—it had improved analysis, revealed all forms of energy at great distance, and allowed her to see soul signatures if they were close enough. It even let her see peoples innards and resource pathways if she wished; a mighty helpful effect for a ranger.

    Yet the thing that had saved her life the most was it saw strength. Perceived it on a deeper level than simple analysis—in the currents and eddies of a person''s soul, in the brightness of their luminance, and the purity and heat of their fire.

    And oh did Kaius burn.

    It was enough to convince her to give her fellow captees a chance.

    That impossible light that raged within him...it gave her hope, and made her wonder what the others were like. True soul reading required line of sight, even if mundane materials were little barrier to her picking up on a soul''s aura. At least, if they were close enough, that is. Even training the skill as much as she could, the hazy glow that was streaked with the colour of a person''s affinities and resources was only visible in a couple dozen long-strides.

    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    It meant that even if she could see

    the teammates from the wall, she had no way of knowing how they matched up to their leader. The greater beast she was confident would be similar, but the mage was more of an unknown.

    “What the fuck did you just say, freak?” their jailor started to yell at the half-elf in question, dragging Kenva from her thoughts. Looking over, she watched Kaius slowly approach the gate to his cell—a hand bound in glyphs reaching through the bars.

    To her natural eyes, they looked like semi organic and intricate tattoos—a custom common in the coastal Hiwiann communities in the far west, but one she had yet to see commonly outside of her migratory people.

    To Farseer, the looping lines of arcane script glowed with an azure fire, volatile mana packed into their form with such density that she was surprised they didn’t sting. They almost looked ready to explode!

    At least, the ones on his hands and feet did—there was another glyph on his chest that had none of the external attachments that the others did, and looked far calmer by comparison.

    Despite the obvious fact that Kaius intended to cast one of the spells he had bound to his hands by unknown means, that was not where most of Kenva’s focus was drawn to. Instead, it was his feet. The mana bound to the artificial circuits roiled with the dynamic intensity of magical energy that had been imbued with intent.

    A surprising thing for someone at their stage to have even an initial mastery of—Kenva only knew what it was because of her skill allowing her to directly see some of the more senior members of her tribe making use of the ability.

    Whatever he was doing, it had to be integral to Kaius’s plan.

    She shuffled forwards, legs grazing uncomfortably against the cold stone floor as she moved to get a better look at what she knew was about to occur.

    It still caught her by surprise when a flash of mana was expelled from Kaius’s glyph, burning flakes of burning orange arcane falling from his hand.

    There was a subtle pop.

    A sliver of steel raced across the hall.

    With her eyes as sharp as they were, she was just barely able to follow it. It spun, stable and true as it flew unerringly towards the back of their jailor''s skull.

    Perfectly aimed, the spell impacted the centre of his head, slamming home.

    Endurance hardened bone parted like poorly woven cloth, a soft thwack breaking the silence as blood and bone sprayed backwards.

    Kenva stared at the gaping hole in the back of her tormentor''s head in shock—processing the red and pink flesh that oozed from within.

    Where had it come from? Where was the channeling?

    It broke every tenant of magic she knew—her mind only unbalanced further by the uncomfortably sudden ease with which the jailor had died. With how fast her eyes worked, she watched him stand there for what felt like aeons, a confused gasp slipping from his lungs as all muscular control left him.

    Like he hadn’t realised he was dead.

    Then the remnant mana held deep in the bloodied spike of steel bloomed, and the jailor''s head was no more.

    It simply...fell open, spilling the remnant contents of the man who had once been onto the floor below. The final deluge of an overly wet end that sloshed up against the bars to Ianmus’s cell as the corpse collapsed bonelessly.

    Porkchop let out a low rumble—a primaeval sound of furious delight and vicarious satisfaction. It sent a chill up her spine, tendrils reaching into the base of her skull, but it wasn’t enough to shake her away from the image that burned itself into her mind.

    A corpse—of an evil man, to be sure—but one that had been a thinking, breathing, being just moments before.

    She’d never seen a body before, certainly not one that had been....procured so violently.

    It was only when she saw another deluge of mana erupt from Kaius out of the corner of her eye that she was able to pull away.

    The roiling control he held over the glyph on his feet exploded outwards—guiding another spell that was cast with instantaneous speed. Much like the first, inefficiencies in the process lead to mana being burned—this time twisted by the nature of its glyph to shower the floor of Kaius’s cell in pale blue motes.

    He lunged towards the door of his cell, and Kenva watched the fabric of the world ripple and twist. Space shifted to the man’s whims, weaving itself into a short corridor that violated her simple understanding of basic constants like distance—leaving a deep ache that radiated over her head from behind her eyes.

    As he stepped impossibly far, Kenva wondered what the hell he was planning. Even with space contracted, she could see that it hadn’t actually affected anything material. He would slam into the barrier all the same.

    And yet...he didn''t.

    Kenva’s jaw slid open, staring in bald faced shock as the corridor of space around Kaius suddenly destabilised, twisting itself into a bizarre knot that was impossible to follow through normal geometry.

    Half of its volume jutted in a way she could only describe as tangential to the world, taking Kaius with it.

    It was barely for a moment, but that was enough.

    He was out of his cell—doubling over and clutching his head the second his feet touched the ground once more. Kenva assumed it was a consequence of overstressing his will, he must have poured everything he had into his spell to ensure success.

    An empathetic frown pulled her lips downward. She’d seen the effect of overdrawn will before—it was supposed to feel like an ember had been shoved into your head, scorching the very centre of your being.

    Regardless of how troublesome the action must have been, it had still worked. Kaius was free—which meant their flight would start soon.

    Kenva pushed herself to her feet, her hands balling tightly into fists. Whatever came next, she would be ready.

    Walking to her cell door, she watched Kaius race to the leaking corpse of their jailor—the body squelching as he rolled it onto its back, fetching the cell keys and wardstones with clinical efficiency.

    He rose, meeting her eyes.

    It sent her heart thumping in her chest—seeing that fire in his soul, that ruthless certainty that nothing would stand in his way or stop him from reaching his freedom.

    It inflamed her own bottled hatred.

    The scorn and anger that had simmered away from months as she suffered helplessly at the hands of the unforgiven and unrepentant scum who had held her trapped.

    Now, with the tables turned, and an opportunity presented to return some of that strife? She felt eager.

    Long suppressed, her heart started to beat to the tempo of the Drums of War once again.